It Is the centennial of legendary American fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon’s birth in 1923. His work and life are being feted in several different Galleries across the globe, the biggest and best being at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
They are presenting a selection of the photographer’s most innovative group portraits in the exhibition Richard Avedon: MURALS. Although Avedon first earned his reputation as a fashion photographer in the late 1940s, his greatest achievement was his stunning reinvention of the photographic portrait. Focused on the short period between 1969 and 1971, this exhibition will explore a critical juncture in the artist’s career, when, after a hiatus from portraiture, he began working with a new camera and a new sense of scale. The exhibition will be organized around three monumental photomurals in The Met collection (the largest measures nearly 10 x 35 feet) that depict the era’s preeminent artists, activists, and politicians. Uniting the murals with session outtakes and contemporaneous projects, the exhibition will track Avedon’s evolving approach to group portraiture, through which he transformed the conventions of the genre.
Max Hollein, Marina Kellen French Director of The Met, said, “Richard Avedon reinvented the group portrait, but his influences can be traced throughout The Met’s galleries, from the sculpted friezes of the Greek and Roman galleries to the John Singer Sargent paintings in the American Wing. He grew up a few blocks from the Museum, and it was a constant source of inspiration. Now, his exceptional murals are treasures of the collection, and we are thrilled to be showing them together for the first time in over 20 years.”
Richard Avedon: MURALS January 19 – October 1, 2023 Now on view at The Met Fifth Avenue ,
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Meanwhile :
Richard Avedon Pushed the Boundaries of Portrait Photography
Twenty iconic works by the master photographer invite museumgoers to engage in the hard conversations that challenge us today
“(Re)Framing Conversations: Photographs by Richard Avedon, 1946-1965,” now on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History,
Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents “Avedon’s West”
As part of a national celebration led by The Richard Avedon Foundation, the Carter is showcasing 13 works of art from the acclaimed series In the American West, which the Museum commissioned in 1979 and premiered in 1985. Over the course of five years, Avedon traveled through 13 states and 189 towns from Texas to Idaho, conducting 752 sittings and photographing a range of everyday people throughout the western U.S. in a now-iconic style he’d formerly applied to celebrities and politicians.
April 1–October 1, 2023 https://www.cartermuseum.org/exhibitions/avedons-west 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd. Fort Worth, TX 76107
Labels: 2023, Amon Carter Mueum, centennial, Metropolitan Museum, NY, Richard Avedon, Smithsonian Museum
